New Drama in Russian

New Drama in Russian

Author: J.A.E. Curtis

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Published: 2020-05-14

Total Pages: 270

ISBN-13: 1350142484

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How and why does the stage, and those who perform upon it, play such a significant role in the social makeup of modern Russia, Ukraine and Belarus? In New Drama in Russian, Julie Curtis brings together an international team of leading scholars and practitioners to tackle this complex question. New Drama, which draws heavily on techniques of documentary and verbatim writing, is a key means of protest in the Russian-speaking world; since the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, theatres, dramatists, and critics have collaborated in using the genre as a lens through which to explore a wide range of topics from human rights and state oppression to sexuality and racism. Yet surprisingly little has been written on this important theatrical movement. New Drama in Russian rectifies this. Through providing analytical surveys of this outspoken transnational genre alongside case-studies of plays and interviews with playwrights, this volume sheds much-needed light on the key issues of performance, politics, and protest in Russia, Ukraine and Belarus. Meticulously researched and elegantly argued, this book will be of immense value to scholars of Russian cultural history and post-Soviet literary studies.


New Russian Drama

New Russian Drama

Author: Maksim Hanukai

Publisher: Columbia University Press

Published: 2019-08-06

Total Pages: 534

ISBN-13: 0231545843

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New Russian Drama took shape at the turn of the new millennium—a time of turbulent social change in Russia and the former Soviet republics. Emerging from small playwriting festivals, provincial theaters, and converted basements, it evolved into a major artistic movement that startled audiences with hypernaturalistic portrayals of sex and violence, daring use of non-normative language, and thrilling experiments with genre and form. The movement’s commitment to investigating contemporary reality helped revitalize Russian theater. It also provoked confrontations with traditionalists in society and places of power, making theater once again Russia’s most politicized art form. This anthology offers an introduction to New Russian Drama through plays that illustrate the versatility and global relevance of this exciting movement. Many of them address pressing social issues, such as ethnic tensions and political disillusionment; others engage with Russia’s rich cultural legacy by reimagining traditional genres and canons. Among them are a family drama about Anton Chekhov, a modern production play in which factory workers compose haiku, and a satirical verse play about the treatment of migrant workers, as well a documentary play about a terrorist school siege and a postdramatic “text” that is only two sentences long. Both politically and aesthetically uncompromising, they chart new paths for performance in the twenty-first century. Acquainting English-language readers with these vital works, New Russian Drama challenges us to reflect on the status and mission of the theater.


Performing Violence

Performing Violence

Author: Birgit Beumers

Publisher: Intellect (UK)

Published: 2009

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9781841502694

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The so-called "New Russian Drama" emerged at the end of the twentieth century, following a long period of decline in dramatic writing in the late Soviet and post-Soviet era. In Performing Violence, Birgit Beumers and Mark Lipovetsky examine the representation of violence in these new dramatic works by young Russian playwrights. Reflecting the disappointment in Yeltsin's democratic reforms and Putin's neoconservative politics, the plays focus on political and social representations of violence, its performances, and its justifications. As the first English-language study of Russian drama and theatre in the twenty-first century, Performing Violence seeks a vantage point for the analysis of brutality in post-Soviet culture. While previous generations had preferred poetry and prose, this new breed of authors--the Presnyakov brothers, Evgeni Grishkovets, and Vasili Sigarev among them--have garnered international recognition for their fierce plays. This book investigates the violent portrayal of the identity crisis of a generation as represented in their theatrical works, and will be a key text for students and scholars of drama, Russian studies, and literature.


Contemporary Queer Plays by Russian Playwrights

Contemporary Queer Plays by Russian Playwrights

Author: Roman Kozyrchikov

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Published: 2021-09-23

Total Pages: 313

ISBN-13: 1350203793

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Contemporary Queer Plays by Russian Playwrights is the first anthology of LGBTQ-themed plays written by Russian queer authors and straight allies in the 21st century. The book features plays by established and emergent playwrights of the Russian drama scene, including Roman Kozyrchikov, Andrey Rodionov and Ekaterina Troepolskaya, Valery Pecheykin, Natalya Milanteva, Olzhas Zhanaydarov, Vladimir Zaytsev, and Elizaveta Letter. Writing for children, teenagers, and adults, these authors explore gay, lesbian, trans, and other queer lives in prose and in verse. From a confession-style solo play to poetic satire on contemporary Russia; from a play for children to love dramas that have been staged for adult-only audiences in Moscow and other cities, this important anthology features work that was written around or after 2013-the year when the law on the prohibition of “propaganda of non-traditional sexual relations among minors” was passed by the Russian government. These plays are universal stories of humanity that spread a message of tolerance, acceptance, and love and make clear that a queer scenario does not necessarily have to end in a tragedy just because it was imagined and set in Russia. They show that breathing, growing old, falling in love, falling out of love, and falling in love again can be just as challenging and rewarding in Moscow and elsewhere in Russia as it can be in New York, Tokyo, Johannesburg, or Buenos Aires.


Transnational Russian Studies

Transnational Russian Studies

Author: Andy Byford

Publisher:

Published: 2020

Total Pages: 376

ISBN-13: 1789620872

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'[The book] shows that nationalist topoi inevitably have anti-transnational implications. [...] Vlad Strukov and Lara Ryazanova-Clarke look at Russian media ecology from the outside - from Latvia and the United Kingdom media ecology. Strukov's contribution conversely elaborates [...] the Russo-national centricity of the international media outlet of the Riga news portal Meduza, which he calls "transnational Russo-centrism".' Dirk Uffelmann, Zeitschrift für Slavische Philologie


Russian Performances

Russian Performances

Author: Julie Buckler

Publisher: University of Wisconsin Press

Published: 2018-09-18

Total Pages: 357

ISBN-13: 0299318303

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Throughout its modern history, Russia has seen a succession of highly performative social acts that play out prominently in the public sphere. This innovative volume brings the fields of performance studies and Russian studies into dialog for the first time and shows that performance is a vital means for understanding Russia's culture from the reign of Peter the Great to the era of Putin. These twenty-seven essays encompass a diverse range of topics, from dance and classical music to live poetry and from viral video to public jubilees and political protest. As a whole they comprise an integrated, compelling intervention in Russian studies. Challenging the primacy of the written word in this field, the volume fosters a larger intellectual community informed by theories and practices of performance from anthropology, art history, dance studies, film studies, cultural and social history, literary studies, musicology, political science, theater studies, and sociology.


Haunted Dreams

Haunted Dreams

Author: Jenny Kaminer

Publisher: Cornell University Press

Published: 2022-03-15

Total Pages: 205

ISBN-13: 1501762273

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Haunted Dreams is the first comprehensive study in English devoted to cultural representations of adolescence in Russia since the end of the Soviet Union in 1991. Jenny Kaminer situates these cultural representations within the broader context of European and Anglo-American scholarship on adolescence and youth, and she explores how Russian writers, dramatists, and filmmakers have repeatedly turned to the adolescent protagonist in exploring the myriad fissures running through post-Soviet society. Through close analysis of prose, drama, television, and film, this book maps how the adolescent hero has become a locus for multiple anxieties throughout the tumultuous years since the end of the Soviet experiment. Kaminer also directly addresses some of the pivotal questions facing scholars of post-Soviet Russia: Have Soviet cultural models been transcended? Or do they continue to dominate? The figure of the adolescent, an especially potent and enduring source of cultural mythology throughout the Soviet years, provides provocative material for exploring these questions. In Haunted Dreams, Kaminer employs a historical approach to reveal how fantasies of adolescence have mutated and remained constant across the Soviet/post-Soviet divide, focusing on violence, temporality, and gender and the body. Some of the works discussed present the possibility of salvaging the model of the heroic adolescent for a new society. Others, by contrast, relegate this figure to the dustbin of history by evoking disgust or horror, or by unmasking the tragic consequences that ensue from the combination of adolescence, violence, and fantasy.


Projecting Russia in a Mediatized World

Projecting Russia in a Mediatized World

Author: Stephen Hutchings

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2022-01-31

Total Pages: 189

ISBN-13: 1000538214

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This book presents a new perspective on how Russia projects itself to the world. Distancing itself from familiar, agency-driven International Relations accounts that focus on what ‘the Kremlin’ is up to and why, it argues for the need to pay attention to deeper, trans-state processes over which the Kremlin exerts much less control. Especially important in this context is mediatization, defined as the process by which contemporary social and political practices adopt a media form and follow media-driven logics. In particular, the book emphasizes the logic of the feedback loop or ‘recursion’, showing how it drives multiple Russian performances of national belonging and nation projection in the digital era. It applies this theory to recent issues, events, and scandals that have played out in international arenas ranging from television, through theatre, film, and performance art, to warfare.


After In-Yer-Face Theatre

After In-Yer-Face Theatre

Author: William C. Boles

Publisher: Springer Nature

Published: 2020-04-29

Total Pages: 255

ISBN-13: 3030394271

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This book revisits In-Yer-Face theatre, an explosive, energetic theatrical movement from the 1990s that introduced the world to playwrights Sarah Kane, Martin McDonagh, Mark Ravenhill, Jez Butterworth, and many others. Split into three sections the book re-examines the era, considers the movement’s influence on international theatre, and considers its lasting effects on contemporary British theatre. The first section offers new readings on works from that time period (Antony Neilson and Mark Ravenhill) as well as challenges myths created by the Royal Court Theatre about the its involvement with In-Yer-Face theatre. The second section discusses the influence of In-Yer-Face on Portuguese, Russian and Australian theater, while the final section discusses the legacy of In-Yer-Face writers as well as their influences on more recent playwrights, including chapters on Philip Ridley, Sarah Kane, Joe Penhall, Martin Crimp, Dennis Kelly, and Verbatim Drama.


Literary Biographies in The Lives of Remarkable People Series in Russia

Literary Biographies in The Lives of Remarkable People Series in Russia

Author: Carol Ueland

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield

Published: 2022-03-14

Total Pages: 351

ISBN-13: 1793618305

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The legendary Russian biography series, The Lives of Remarkable People, has played a significant role in Russian culture from its inception in 1890 until today. The longest running biography series in world literature, it spans three centuries and widely divergent political and cultural epochs: Imperial, Soviet, and Post-Soviet Russia. The authors argue that the treatment of biographical figures in the series is a case study for continuities and changes in Russian national identity over time. Biography in Russia and elsewhere remains a most influential literary genre and the distinctive approach and branding of the series has made it the economic engine of its publisher, Molodaia gvardiia. The centrality of biographies of major literary figures in the series reflects their heightened importance in Russian culture. The contributors examine the ways that biographies of Russia's foremost writers shaped the literary canon while mirroring the political and social realities of both the subjects’ and their biographers' times. Starting with Alexander Pushkin and ending with Joseph Brodsky, the authors analyze the interplay of research and imagination in biographical narrative, the changing perceptions of what constitutes literary greatness, and the subversive possibilities of biography during eras of political censorship.